This site was created for educational purposes by Kevin T. Glowacki.
All
content on this website (including text and photographs), unless
otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative
Commons License.

The Pnyx was the official
meeting place of the Athenian democratic assembly (ekklesia). In the earliest days of
Athenian democracy (after the reforms of Kleisthenes in 508 B.C.), the ekklesia met in the Agora. Sometime
in the early 5th century, the meeting place was moved to a hill south
and west of the Acropolis. This new meeting place came to be called
"Pnyx" (from the Greek word meaning "tightly packed together". Three
phases can be distinguished:

Pnyx I: Probably
constructed in the early 5th century. The people apparently sat on the
hillside facing a speaker's platform on the north. The seating capacity
may have been anywhere from 6000 to 13,000 people. This phase is
represented archaeologically only by a few cuttings in the bedrock and
a boundary stone (not found in situ), so that it is impossible to
determine the date and size with any precision.

Pnyx II: Probably late
5th century B.C. In this phase the orientation of the auditorum was
apparently reversed (a recontruction that is based more upon ancient
literary sources than from the actual archaeological record). A stepped
terrace wall was created on the north to support an artificial terrace,
and the people sat facing a speaker's platform on the south. Part of
the stepped terrace wall is preserved, as well as a staircase with
rock-cut steps leading up to it from the direction of the Agora. The
size of the auditorium (as it is restored by the excavators) is not
that much larger than Pnyx I.

Pnyx III: The Pnyx was
rebuilt and expanded in the 3rd quarter of the 4th century B.C.,
probably around 345-335 B.C. A massive, curved, retaining wall was
built (or at least begun) on the north. The southern side of the
auditorium and speaker's platform (bema) were quarried out of the
natural bedrock. (Traces of the quarrying process can still be seen at
the eastern side of the great rock-cut scarp). On a terrace above
(south of) the speaker's platform, the foundations were begun for 2
long stoas (but these seem never to have been finished). It is unknown
for how many years Pnyx III was used as the meeting place of the
ekklesia, and certainly by the 1st century B.C. the the assembly held
their meetings in the Theater of Dionysos on the South Slope of the
Acropolis.

Finally, in the Roman period, part of the Pnyx was used as a sanctuary
of Zeus Hypsistos. Evidence for the sanctuary consist of c. 50 niches
for votive plaques cut into the bedrock scarp east of the speaker's
platform. Many of the votive plaques are carved with representations of
human body parts (eyes, breasts, etc.), suggesting that this Zeus
Hypsistos was a healing divinity.